SINGAPORE: As the waves roll gently beneath him, Kelvin Pung guides his diving hood over his head, tugging it into place with his right hand. With focused effort, he works his limbs into his wetsuit before reaching round his torso to fasten various straps into position. “When I try to rig up my scuba gear, there are a lot of clips I need to buckle,” says the 46-year-old when asked about the most challenging part of getting ready for a dive.
But swimming with only one functioning arm is “very easy”, he adds. The avid underwater photographer has been capturing artistic photos of Singapore’s marine critters since 2014. Losing the use of his left arm in an accident years ago has not deterred his quest to document and promote the island’s aquatic gems.
And gems there are, like the “doughnut doto” — which is a nudibranch, or sea slug, with ring-shaped appendages — that is also found in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and southern Africa but possibly nowhere else. “According to the regular divers, ..
. they can only find this in fewer than three or four places in the world,” he says. He has also shot photos of the Pikachu nudibranch, another specimen sought after by marine photographers overseas and mainly found in the Indo-Pacific’s tropical waters.
Pung is one of four individuals featured in On The Red Dot’s latest series, Secret Heroes , which celebrates Singaporeans who are quietly contributing to the nation in their own way despite the odds stacked agains.